The Sound of Thunder
by Scarabbug
Summary: Spyro remembers, and comes to some disturbing realisations about himself and Cynder. Spoilers for both A New Beginning and The Eternal Night.


**The style of this fanfiction had been utterly gacked from **_**LightningFlash8,**_** who utilised the remembrance technique in a Spirited Away fanfiction. I believe I've also used it once before, for a YuGiOh fanfiction, but that tapered away from the original form a lot more than this fic does. **

**Reviews**** and concrit are appreciated. Standard disclaimers apply. ****And for those of us with a short attention span, don't worry – it's short. ****I was also a little creative with some of the canon lines, seeing as they fit better when I shifted them about a bit.

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The Sound of Thunder.

He remembers that Sparx hadn't been crazy about the idea, but Spyro did it anyway.

_'I can't leave her behind!' _

He remembers flying out of Convexity, carrying Cynder with him –small again, small and _right_, just the way she should have been. "Just like me", he'd said, though he had known even then that it wasn't really true.

He remembers that she tried to kill him when under the power of the Dark Master's thrall. But leaving her there to die after unleashing his own intense powers upon her would've made him as bad as the Dark Master himself. He knows now, after the Chronicler's stories, that it's very important for him not to be like that; besides, it isn't the way they raised him.

He remembers bringing her home and Ignitus... Spyro could only call it "fussing" over her, the way he always had Spyro. Discipline coupled with gentleness. Tempering her fierce spirit and rage with her inner, burning desire for forgiveness. Spyro remembers thinking; secretly (for he'd never say it aloud) that Cynder and Ignitus were strangely alike.

_'Ever since the night of t__h__e raid I've dreamt of this day.' _

_'It __wasn't__ just you__. We _all_ failed.' _

He remembers the way Sparx always shuddered, whenever Cynder came into the room. He remembers waking her up one night and frightening her by mistake. He remembers being thrown several feet across the room, stabbed at with sharp claws and hissed at with spits of violet fire. She'd overpowered him easily in the state he was in, after Convexity – no powers, no strength, no willpower. She'd stopped as soon as she realised it was him, uttered a thousand apologies. The cuts still hurt days later, and Cynder still refused to meet his eye.

He remembers hearing her laugh for the first time (by which he means "the first time she laughed in a way which was _not_ a cruel screech brimming with malicious glee"). Cyril had Volteer had been arguing, as usual, and somehow or another one of the metal shields adorning the temple walls had been shaken loose and had fallen on Volteer's head. The laugh emerged before she could stop herself, and before Spyro knew it he was laughing, too.

He remembers that neither of the elders had been particularly amused.

He remembers talking to her, the night before the assassins raided the temple, about what it might have been like, to grow up as a dragon in a dragon's world. Neither of them had ever fit in, amongst the people and places of their childhood. She found that she was never truly happy about her upbringing, however much it had felt like she was at the time. He found that he couldn't imagine ever having a different life to the one he'd had.

_'I've got... a bad feeling.'_

_'Yeah. Me too.' _

He remembers telling her of his mother and father; her utter and total confusion about just how he'd managed to go so long without squashing them to death. She had something of a morbid sense of humour, but it was a good question, nonetheless. Spyro didn't tell her that they'd deliberately slept at least three feet above his head to prevent it.

_'Just be yourself, Spyro. That's all that any of us can do.' _

He remembers joking with her about it, telling her hugging was difficult when your son was seven times your size, but they managed. Cynder's own experience of hugging was... different. Her embraces had been made of cold air and cruel smoke and blackness enfolding her like a blanket.

He remembers not liking her stories one little bit, and yet she talked about them as if her life had been no different from his own. As if she didn't understand the awfulness and cruelty of it all. He supposes that cruelty is all in the eye of the beholder. After all, as Sparx so often reminds him, she _did_ try to kill them.

He'd considered hugging her, demonstrating that it had nothing to do with cold or darkness, but... her words had frightened him out of touching anyone or anything, and anyway, she likely wouldn't have known how to respond.

_'She gives me the creeps, dude.__ Evil, psycho she-dragon... sees my teeth? See what she's _doing_ to my teeth?__' _

He remembers her telling him about the dreams she'd been having. He'd been having bad dreams of his own, but from the way she described them, it was sometimes difficult to tell where his dreams ended and Cynder's began, they were so alike. Her's always seemed darker than his were, though. Colder. Less infused with gold and purple. Less likely to be ended by a tug on a torn or a boorish, remarkably loud voice, bellowing in his ear.

Cynder, Spyro remembered, had never had a brother to wake her from bad dreams.

He remembers asking her to stay with them the night of the attack, because it was cold outside and maybe it would be better for her not to sleep alone. He remembers her shuffling, confused, embarrassed, maybe even a little scared, and then declining and going to sleep by herself again, beneath the Temple Statue.

He remembers her running away, with the proclamation that the temple, this place of dragons and destiny, is not her home.

_'Just like old times, eh Spyro?'_

He remembers that she tried to help him, on the pirate's ship. Her disturbingly accurate impersonation of her old, crueller self while she tried to think of a way out of the mess they'd somehow gotten themselves into. He remembers the apes attacking the ship and snatching her away before they had a chance for a proper reunion.

He remembers the Chronicler seeking him out, "_knocking him out in as many damned inconvenient places as possible_", as Sparx had put it. Testing him, challenging him. Spyro hadn't minded the tests because they reawakened his powers one by one, but a part of him wanted to tell Cynder about them. To try and make her understand what he was seeing in these unexpected dreams.

_'Young dragon, you've been keeping secrets.' _

Sparx was right in warning him that Cynder could be dangerous, but Cynder had never been given a choice before now. Every instant of her life had been controlled, from long before she hatched. He remembers that things could have been different. They could have grown up together, with Ignitus and the guardians and a hundred other brothers and sister.

Could have. This wasn't how things had worked out. It wasn't what was written in the Chronicler's books. But Spyro remembers that their futures can be viewed only in glimmers and not in solid stone. Their days to come have not yet been written. This is what he thinks about, when the Chronicler tells him there is no hope for the creature hatched and raised thinking cold, crystal shards were her toys and Deathwings were her playmates. This is what makes Spyro decide that Cynder is not yet out of reach.

He remembers behind pushed into the Well of Souls, and feeling like his heard was exploding from the inside out.

He remembers the same, cold, deepening sensation that Cynder had described from her dreams. He remembers wanting to kill her, because she was _there _–nothing more complicated. Just her _presence_ had been enough. He wanted to hurt her. To make them go away. He remembers glaring daggers at Sparx, and the same look of horror on Cynder's face as he imaged he must have worn in her presence, long ago when she was so much bigger and more terrifying. He remembers wanting to stop.

_'I can't...' _

Spyro remembers that there is no black and white and that darkness is not simply hatred and cruelty and harm. He remembers that the darkness had loved Cynder too, held her, adored her, as it now tried to adore him. As an object, perhaps –as something it could own and control, but love, nonetheless.

He remembers how much more terrified that thought made him. He remembers Sparx trying to calm him down, and failing. He remembers wanting to kill them, because the Dark powers told him to.

He remembers Cynder _pushing_, and the darkness disappearing. He remembers her screaming at him to get up. The walls of the Mountain collapsing inwards.

_'I'm sorry,__ I couldn't stop.__' _

He remembers what the Chronicler told him about riding out the storms to fight another day. He remembers the letter sent to him while caged on the pirate's vessel. He remembers feeling utterly, totally alone in the well of the Dark Master's hold.

He knows how Cynder must have felt, and he knows that neither of them are, nor ever will be, alone.

He remembers feeling that, in some way; he was going to have to depend on Cynder from now on. As a reminder of what he could not afford to become, and the person he would have to struggle to remain.

He remembers telling them both to get close to him –an order, this time, and not a request. Not something she could say no to. He remembers that she went to him with only a moment's hesitation. He remembers wrapping his wings around her, holding her and his brother as close as he dared. He remembers sucking the air out of time or perhaps the time out of the air; he'd never quite been able to figure out exactly how his Dragon Time worked, he was only grateful that it did.

He remembers the walls of the cavern finally giving way – and slowing to a dead stop before they hit the stony floor of the Well of Souls. He remembers Cynder choking before the air in both their lungs became still. He remembers the beat of Sparx's wings slowing and stopping. He remembers Ignitus and Cyril and Volteer and Terrador and Mom and Dad and Mole-Yair and someone named "Hunter of Avalar" and all those many thousands of people who are depending on him as much as he now feels he is depending on Cynder. He remembers the sound of thunder. He remembers...

_'You're okay Spyro._

_'You're okay. You're with friends.__' _

Fin.

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End file.
